


Broken toy

by Sporie121



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: ADHD, Ableism, Angst, Child Abuse, Drug Use, Gen, Kidlock, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Teenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 12:43:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1226785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sporie121/pseuds/Sporie121
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock was four years old, he thought that broken things were fixed simply by throwing them away. Now, he realises how much harder it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken toy

When Sherlock was four years old, he thought that broken things were fixed by simply by throwing them away. This theory suited the mind of the toddler, because when you throw something out it wan't anyone's responsibility any more, not to the exasperated shop owner as he glued the knight's plastic head back on for a tearful Sherlock, not the responsibility of his annoyed father or one of the maids for stepping on the toys that constantly scattered the nursery no matter how many times Father ordered the maids to clean it. A broken toy simply  _is,_ and at that age Sherlock thinks it makes perfect sense to throw something away. Now, he realises how much more complicated it is.

Sometimes, Sherlock feels like a broken toy.

And Sherlock knows that sounds silly, because he isn't made of plastic and does't sit on a hard plastic shelf in a shop window. But sometimes, when his Father shouts at him and smacks him and he hears his Mother crying from upstairs because  _she didn't want another baby, especially one that doesn't talk and stares at her all the time._ Then, Sherlock feels like a toy, a doll that looked fun to dress up and play games with, but now it's been brought home it doesn't sound as fun any more. Sherlock can't remember what his mother looks like- the last time he saw her he was three, when she tried to kill him. Sherlock didn't realise that at three years old, that suffocating someone with a pillow was strange or even dangerous, sometimes even thinking now,at thirty-seven years old, that he's exaggerating things; Sherlock was making it up, that all mothers did that, being cruel to be kind. He still remembers it, the pillow being pressed into his face, his arms flailing as he clawed at the pillow with his nails in a weak defence, until just about the time his breathing would have stopped, the pillow was pulled off of his face and the shape of his mother opened the door and ran, the click-clack of her heels replaced with the slap of silken slippers against the wooden floorboards. It was then that the toddler felt more like a toy than ever; they were bored with dressing him up and looking after him and feeding him and keeping him safe, so deliberately breaking him.

On day, when Sherlock was playing in the nursery under the watchful eye of one of the many maids working in the house, he asked her is Mummy was ill, because she stayed in bed all day and cried a lot. "Your mummy's got the blues, Sherlock" was the maid's response."I'm sure she'll be better soon." Those words made Sherlock nearly dance with excitement. His mother was going to get better! Mycroft and his father had often told Sherlock about how his mother was before she was sick, and now she was getting better! Sherlock imagined her jumping out of her bed, her blond hair brushed into careful curls, taking Sherlock's chubby hand and buying him sweets and reading him books and taking him to the park to feed the ducks, like the stories about his Mother he'd heard. He didn't know what the dreaded blues were, but he imagined a disease that turned his poor mother blue as the pastel walls in the nursery and her face swelling up. She was going to get better soon, his four-year-old mind decided. The pillow incident was just because she was sick, that was all.

Sherlock's mother got better when Sherlock was around seven years old and Mycroft was twelve, after Sherrinford was born. The three years before that were a blur for Sherlock, mixing between screaming arguments between his mother and father, school and being brought to the park to feed the ducks. Sherlock, as it turns out, has a difficulty concentrating. It isn't really Sherlock's fault, because he's not doing it to annoy anyone, he just doesn't understand how the class can concentrate on boring things like reading tedious books and adding 5+5 when the rest of he world is so brilliant and colourful and beautiful, Sherlock has no reason to focus on the grey parts. Mummy still stayed in bed all day, crying and having the maids bring her food and strange looking pills. Mummy becomes much more happier when she finds out about the pregnancy, forgetting about pills and depression. She still only gives Sherlock passing glances and insists that he stops staring at her  _in that freaky way he does,_ but she's happier. She has the room next to hers painted yellow, buying a white crib and painting bees and flowers on the walls, filling the room with toys that Sherlock is forbidden to play with, puts her and her husband's hand on her swollen belly to feel the baby kicking. Mycroft had no interest in the baby- he was in secondary school, and found that time at home became much more tortuous after seeing everything all prepared and grey and blissfully boring, only to return to messes and disasters and arguments and a tearful baby bother. Everything is going strangely well ('well' considering the fact that this _is_ the Holmes family), until Mummy trips over the plastic knight. Sherlock was playing on the stairs when she tripped, her foot tripping on a plastic knight who's arm fell off from Mummy's high heels. There was a sickening  _thud_  when she fell, like she had simply fell a few steps and would get up again, right as rain.

She never did get up.

A week after Sherlock's mother died, he found his toy knight hidden under the rug, his left arm gone from its socket. Sherlock decided then that it was his fault. It was his fault Mummy died, his fault he couldn't concentrate in school, his fault he was born,  _everything_ was his own damn fault. Later, Sherlock threw the toy away. That's what you do with broken toys, after all.

At thirteen years old, Sherlock had two friends.

The first was Molly Hooper, who Sherlock met when he was twelve. By that time, Sherlock had been brought to a doctor about his lack of concentration and was told he had ADHD. Sherlock hates that word, the way it rolls of his father's tongue as though he were a bearded lady or a two-headed man, like the attractions they saw at the circus one day. Mycroft had left his pathetic fämily of a drinker and a freak to live with one of his mother's sisters, which caused argument and millions of angry phone calls and messages. Sherlock's father lost his job, which in turn made him sell the house and move into a much smaller flat, and started hitting Sherlock when he cried for Mycroft. Eventually, Sherlock stopped crying or even showing any emotion at all, which made his father even angrier. School was a slow sludge until secondary school, where he met Molly. 

Secondary school, as it turned out, changed people in ways that were never even necessary to begin with. Sherlock had changed mentally, the main point being by using his lack of concentrating on people to deduce their lives, which earned him a slap across the face from his father for pointing out he was sleeping with in of his fellow workers(Sherlock had seen her on one occasion; she looked disturbingly like his mother.) The girls, on the other hand, changed drastically; thy dyed their hair and wore heels to school and plastered on layers of make-up. Molly, on the other hand, stayed the way she was. Her mousy hair was always in a tight ponytail, her uniform in perfect condition and her black shoes always shining. The only time Sherlock saw something interesting in her was when he found out that he liked to stay in at lunch and dissect animals, so they silently enjoyed each others company as they poked at a chicken's intestines together. Maybe it wasn't what was usually considered a friendship, but it suited Sherlock.

The next friend Sherlock made was John Watson.

He had met John after school, when Sherlock was beaten up by a group of idiots for pointing out that one was cheating on his girlfriend, and deducing the other three lads. It was partly for a revenge that no one would probably understand (the tall, dark-hired one was cheating on Molly, with one of the generic dyed-hair-ear-piercing girls). It wasn't until they turned around the corner that he heard shouts and thumping and kicks, when a tall boy with sandy hair and bright blue eyes kneeled down next to Sherlock.

"You all right there, mate?"

Sherlock was sixteen when he made a third friend.

This friend didn't smile shyly or show him quicker ways to open a frog's stomach with a scalpel like Molly, or walk along the length of the park with him or praise his deduction skills like John.

His new friend was called cocaine, and at sixteen years old it seemed like Sherlock's best friend.

Sherlock doesn't remember who introduced him to cocaine, but he sure as fuck can remember what it felt like to be high. He doesn't get distracted and no one's there to slap him or shout at him or whine about  _living up to your potential,_ because Sherlock's high as a kite and doesn't give a shit any more.

When Sherlock is nineteen, he has had too much cocaine and has to be rushed to the hospital, and when he wakes up groggily there's a nurse there, smiling and telling him a blonde-haired boy waiting for him outside, and Sherlock bursts into tears for the first time since he was nine, when he cried because Mycroft had left and wasn't coming back

John Watson is Sherlock's best friend.

It was John who found Sherlock, overdosed and dying on the cheap leather sofa.

Sherlock drops out of school at sixteen, John doesn't care.

Sherlock turns up at John's flat one day because he can't stand being near his father any more, John doesn't care.

When Sherlock was on drugs- on possibly before that- he thought that he'd never live to see 30, because no one would care either way, until a sandy-haired teenager with dreams of being a doctor throws himself head-first into the mix, a mix of recovery and rehab and finding his brother and Molly and making sure that Sherlock gets it into his head that cocaine wasn't his friend and never was his friend. 

The first time John visited Sherlock in the hospital, he doesn't punch or scream or fight him like Sherlock wants him to. Instead John sits on the hard grey chair next to Sherlock's bad, and stays that way for nearly an hour.

When Sherlock gets out of the hospital at last, he tells John all about his life as they drive to John's flat, and John looks him in the eye and nods in the most sincere way Sherlock has ever seen.

The next day, Sherlock grabs John's hand over the table where they're having breakfast, and John looks at him in shock. It's only until Sherlock starts rubbing clumsy, comforting circles into John's hand that the good doctor smiles at him, saying all the things he ever needs to say.

 


End file.
